. . . Or maybe I should be saying Marketers Take Your Mark. Either way, I’m seeing example after example of why printed communications need to become increasingly nimble to stay relevant in the marketing mix. I was inspired by a recent post from Pat Allen of Rock the Boat Marketing (and by the Old Spice Guy video embedded in the post)

>

According to Pat, “the tilt toward real-time communicating exposes what we believe to be the greatest weakness in investment product communicating: Reacting after the fact and on a delay.” While she is looking at the asset management industry through a marketing lens – you could easily point that same lens at print service providers and in-house shops. “The Old Spice guy work is an excellent demonstration of an emerging communications competency: the preparing to improvise, the organizing to be able to react in the moment to external stimulus,” says Pat.

Old Spice Guy says “Now I’m on a boat. Look in your hand. Look back at me. Now I’m on a ship. Look at your man. Look back at me. I’m on a horse.” Can your communications shift that quickly – and look that good doing it? (Phew!)

There have been several posts recently about combining print and other digital marketing channels. Most frequently referenced is putting PURLs on direct mail. You know what? That’s already old hat. PURLs provide an additional channel for the recipient, which is good, but it is not necessarily preparing the marketer to be able to  react quickly to external stimulus from social media sites, breaking news or other market activity.

We need to enable our print campaigns to launch on a dime in support of trends gleaned from online activity. Of course, we will want to communicate with people who are already online through online means – but why not extend the learning to be able to launch the same great message to the customers we know don’t use our online channels? Or simply reinforce the online message with a tangible printed campaign?

Allen cites a social media presentation by Matthew Guiste, category manager for social media at Starbucks and successful revenue-generating programs that involved a rapid exchange of information, internally and externally. Starbucks identified mini-trends from activity on Facebook and Twitter and worked quickly to syndicate that content across multiple other social media outlets. They could also have launched a direct mail campaign – but sadly – with the response times of most organizations today – not fast enough to ride the wave of the current trend.

For direct mail (and transactional communications) to gain a broader piece of the “social media response” pie it will need to be faster and more collaborative with what is now a social media silo. If the collaboration and rapid publishing tools can be put in place – with workflows that link social media monitoring, analytics, content management, approval and production approvals – social media can be a great friend to digital printing rather than a competitor.

So, look at your social media channels. Look back at me. Look at your direct mail. Look back at me. Anything is possible. I’m on a plane (Seriously, I am.)

Grant Stewart, Founder of Vectis

The Vectis Agency in Australia has a great track record of helping their customers, who are typically printers, mail houses and postal organizations, to sell the concept of Transpromo, or Integrated Insight Marketing to their end customers using case studies.

 According to Grant Stewart, the Founder of Vectis, “we have pursued case studies that prove a marketing point, for example: can the statement deliver value long after the other channels have stopped working ?” They showed the answer to be “yes” in their Bartercard case study.  “Or can the statement deliver better value than competing channels?” Again, the answer was “yes” according to a case study for Lombard. “Or can the statement offer a unique competitive advantage to winning business  as demonstrated by our Sutherland case example, rather than the traditional print-legacy type color vs. B&W vs. paper vs. electronic discussions.

Stewart believes that the best way to get a Transpromo program going is to articulate the opportunity cost of not doing it. The Vectis  case studies  were used to articulate early opportunity cost which gained initial traction and cross section (marketing, operations, finance) buy-in. Most programs have since gone on to far more sophisticated levels, and continue to fuel themselves under a rigorous, measurement structure.

“I also believe printers need to spend a bit of time learning from direct markets” states Stewart. “When was the last time you heard a printer talk about a response rate’s statistical margin of error?”

Printers and Direct Marketers have a lot to learn from each other to make a more compelling Transpromo argument to end users but, the challenge to me remains simple: help the customer articulate the opportunity cost of not doing it using the tools the customer has. Only then can you move these programs to levels that you might both aspire to.

I’ve included a link to a variety of Vectis case studies here. I cite them often because they tend to be simple, straightforward proof points for one decision criteria at a time. Thanks Grant.

The USPS has petitioned the Postal Regulatory Commision (PRC) to reject the AMA’s request. Jim Tierney at Multi-channel Merchant has a good article covering the issues.

My personal opinion is that the USPS needs the flexibility to renegotiate labor contracts. These “fixed costs,” which should not be fixed, are the underlying factor dragging down the basic supply and demand economics of our postal system. So – do you think that all of the postal workers should keep their jobs even if there is no work to do? Do you believe that a postal rate hike will cost jobs in other sectors? Do you think that reducing the amount of mail will have environmental benefits that will outweigh the economic impact? If you feel strongly about any of these issues – I’d like to hear about it (and you should tell your representatives in the Congress and Senate too!)

According to Trivers, about 95% of marketing dollars are focused on attracting new customers at the bottom of the “loyalty ladder.” I like the image of moving customers up a loyalty ladder.  Customers atop this ladder are so satisfied that they won’t leave you at any price and they are active promoters of your business. Rather than pouring out all the budget at the bottom of the ladder, companies should be spending at least 30% at the top half of the ladder leveraging existing customer communications.  According to J.D. Powers, in the auto insurance industry 56% of highly satisfied customers will recommend your business to a friend; such customers report making 2.5 actual recommendations and 46% of them say they would never leave you. Results are similar across industries.

So in an economic climate that requires smart spending, consider winning by increasing focus on your customer base. Know that this can be a really big win—like a Red Sox win against the Yankees in late September.  Why?  Because the most effective way to market to your base- increasing loyalty and gaining new sales and referrals- is also highly cost-efficient.  You can leverage the transactional documents your company must produce and deliver to customers.  In lean times, more than ever, a TransPromo strategy (yes, it’s that word again) is a home run because the transactional communications budget also supports your marketing program.

Cost-savings score big, but the game-winner is that TransPromo (or as I prefer, Transactional Response Marketing or TRM) can achieve significantly better results than more costly traditional forms of marketing such as direct mail or print/TV/radio advertising. TRM can achieve these powerful results for two reasons.  First, research shows that transactional communications are important to customers so they pay more attention to them – and therefore to the messages you integrate with these communications.  The average person will give a statement nine times more attention than a piece of direct mail.  (Less than half of direct mail is even opened.) Again, according to J D Powers, transaction documents are a key driver of customer satisfaction, comprising 41% of the consumer finance satisfaction score and 17% of the credit card industry satisfaction score. Second, the data that drives transactional communications enables you to integrate specific, personalized, highly relevant messages and offers that are more likely to please customers and/or to get them to take action.

TRM is powering winning marketing teams today.  A March 2008 study by Aberdeen Group showed that among companies meeting best in class standards, those utilizing closed loop marketing exceeded other best in class peers.  The closed loop group achieved on average 6% greater ROMI and 7% more lead conversions. Revenues per account were 3% greater and average return on marketing campaigns was 14% greater. Transactional Response Marketing is closed loop marketing applied to transaction documents. Company success stories include Avis Australia which saw response rates rise from 2.5% to 10% when invoices were utilized to extend offers vs. other approaches such as direct mail or advertising.

So do you make the business case for Transpromo or Transactional Response marketing based on immediate response rate, long-term customer retention and value, or substantial operational efficiencies? Does it taste great or is it less filling? Is TRM as switch hitter? Have I been watching too much baseball? It’s a nice hot Sunday afternoon– I think I’ll go grab a beer and ponder this at length.

Cheers.

Megaspirea, a French firm, introduced what they called “Dynamic Envelope Creation” via the Mailliner 100 at IPEX way back in 2006. Dynamic Envelope Creation was hailed as a holistic process for making a complete mail piece (envelope plus content) out of a single print stream. Variable images and messages could be printed directly on the envelope itself. Despite a strategic relationship with Pitney Bowes and Emtex that should have given the company a lot of reach in the US market – the technology never really took off.

You would think that the ability to dynamically market on the outside of the envelope would be marketing catnip – but in fact, many direct mail marketers feel that the white envelope approach is more effective than jazzy graphics on the outside of the envelope. Transaction mailers today, are still not well integrated with marketing departments (whether in plant or service providers) and therefore envelope marketing is a tough sell to this group.

DST Output (www.dstoutput.com) recently announced an envelope marketing solution that, despite the demise of past market entrants, I believe has a real chance of success. Why? Because the solution is as appealing – or potentially even more appealing- from an operations and efficiency standpoint as it is from a marketing standpoint. Like white paper, full color printing in general – operational efficiencies from wrap envelopes are creating the business case for more effective marketing. First let me explain the solution.

DST’s Wrap Envelope technology is a no-touch process for printing, wrapping and finishing high-volume, First-Class Mail packages in a high-speed production environment. Wrap extends major mailers’ customer marketing efforts with dynamic messaging that can be applied to the front, back and inside of the envelope. This means that the solution provides an envelope marketing opportunity for transaction mail like statements and bills, but also can double as a stand-alone self-mailer.

DST Output’s Wrap Envelopes are printed duplex on continuous plain roll-stock paper, and then literally wrap around multiple pages of statements, bills, inserts and reply/remit envelopes. The process enables mailers to embellish the interior as well as the exterior of the envelope with marketing messaging and promotional content, such as coupons, event information or other customer marketing materials – and can include customer data on the interior to create the self mailer – or additional personalized offer.

There are other operational benefits as well:

1. Placing messaging on the envelope can minimize postal weight by reducing the insert count and replace separate mailings and direct mail.
2. Wrap Envelopes can serve as a self-mailer for privacy statements, regulatory notices or e-statement bounce notifications minimizing the cost of these mailings.
3. The windowless Wrap enhances security and privacy with no see-through areas.
4. No window also makes it fully recyclable (no cellophane) and therefore more sustainable.
5. There is no need to pre-order and warehouse envelopes reducing storage, commercial print and procurement costs as well as improving cash flow.

The Wrap Envelope is a compelling solution for one-page statements or bills – with or without a remit envelope. From a quality perspective, Wrap utilizes an integrated no-touch manufacturing process that tracks each and every mail piece during production to verify that the total package is complete and accurate. If an error is detected, the process automatically remakes the entire mail package.

So, no-touch quality control, cost savings, improved privacy and sustainability and – oh, by the way – completely dynamic messaging inside and out. I think that’s pretty innovative. (Take a look at the examples below.) If DST was selling this as a hardware solution, I think it would be a big success. For now, only DST outsourcing customers can take advantage of the technology and it will be interesting to see whether it is adopted for the marketing features, the operational features or both. How would you use it if you could?

(Click on pictures to see larger view)

Wrap Envelope (front) with logo and text message

Example of Wrap Envelope (front) with Dynamic Graphic

Wrap example with Dynamic Messaging on Back of Envelope

Wrap envelope with Dynamic Graphics and Messages Inside

"Outside In" Wrap Campaign

.

.

.

.

While the Century Gothic font is proven to use less ink (or toner) than Arial and several other fonts, it is also wider and therefore can take more paper, thereby undercutting any savings. The story also referenced (incorrectly) that Century Gothic is more efficient than using an Ecofont. The folks in Green Bay apparently weren’t aware that Ecofont makes a variety of typefaces. Naturally, Ecofont was immediately on the wires with a rebuttal “Why Ecofont saves more money than Century Gothic.”  

Ecofont www.ecofont.com purports to save up to 25% on ink or toner without a loss of legibility. According to the literature, the Ecofont software works with your existing fonts and “during printing Ecofont ‘shoots’ holes into the letters that you have typed.” It is  intended for PCs and workstations versus production printing – but there may be production parallels.

Printer.com decided to take the analysis a bit further and test 9 different fonts for their respective ink and toner usage. The most efficient font cost 30% less than Arial in supplies costs and the least efficient cost 10% more than Arial. That’s a potential 40% swing in cost based on font selection.

Many of us are subject to the constraints of corporate brand identity standards and can’t randomly change the fonts we use, but where there are a variety of fonts to choose from it would be worthwhile to conduct your own tests on relative ink / toner usage. Where brand standards are not an issue, printers would do well to have font efficiency guidelines available as a benefit to their clients – particularly if printing on toner devices. In addition, corporations trying to push electronic adoption should consider investing in Ecofonts for your customers so that they can save money when they print information out at home. Perhaps this can be your next incentive for those who sign up for e-statements or other e-presentment. They might even thank you.

Some healthcare organizations have stepped up to the challenge. According to Shawn Connors, president of Hope Health, “You need to accept that, whether you like it or not, you’re somewhat in the publishing business. “ Health plans should be stepping up to the plate with a menu of communications to support employers with explaining coverage, the impact of health reform on coverage and to develop and manage wellness plans that save both the employer and plans money. The EBN article cites some compelling statistics from JD Power on current satisfaction with health plans which underscore the importance of communications.

When health plans don’t provide adequate communications, employers are left to fill in the gaps and are often poorly equipped to do so. In many cases, the employers themselves don’t have a full grasp of all the nuances of their health plan (or plans) and most (like the rest of us) don’t have a clear understanding of how healthcare reform will impact their specific company benefits.

This presents an opportunity for professional communicators to step in and provide solution templates along with consulting support to help health plans and individual employers deliver the necessary series of communications to employees. Succeeding in this market will require developing expertise in the HR and healthcare market, or partnering with someone who is already operating in that space. Several experts are referenced in the article “Fight confusion with communication” and others are referenced on the EBN site.

A highly regulated market going through change where communications provide an opportunity to boost satisfaction and save money seems like a good avenue for business starved printers to pursue. Healthy hunting!

Once direct deposit becomes standard with an even greater portion of the US population — will this start a trend for electronic business-to consumer-payments? What does this mean for the future of check printing?

“Is the art and science of using transaction documents as a customer retention vehicle a threat to direct mailers or an opportunity? “

People took various positions, some positing that direct mail service bureaus (DMers) don’t know enough about data to take on transaction documents, others suggesting that transaction printers (TPers) don’t know enough about serving the needs of marketing to take on Transpromo. There seemed to be several consistent themes:

1. The business of marketing on transaction communications is growing.
2. Service providers who can offer both direct mail and marketing on transaction print (essential mail) have a brighter future than those who can’t.
3. Partnering, in the near term, may be the most effective and reliable solution for service providers and their customers.

I’ve included some quotes from the (much longer) LinkedIn thread below. Please join in and share your opinion.

“It should be an opportunity to DM service providers but their fear of effectively managing data makes it a threat for many. Some will steer their way through and then manage the relationships they have with DM customers from whom they can take advantage to deliver true TransPromo applications. Many will shy away from the opportunity and the challenge – for those I fear life will be short. “ James Shand, TriPartum Limited

 “I’m not sure most DMers can make the leap to transactional, let alone TP, which is much more sophisticated. Some can and have, but these are mostly different skill sets. DM firms in general have neither the IT/data sophistication nor the access to the right c-level execs in their customer-companies to get the buy-in and traction required to get the TP ball rolling.

Or spun another way, it would be easier for a transactional firm that does some good TP to expand much more easily into doing DM for its customers. And in that sense TP could be a real threat to DM firms. Now imagine a partnership between a smart DM firm and a smart transactional shop. That’s not a threat. That’s opportunity. “ Noel Ward, Managing Director, Brimstone Hill Associates

 “From a data standpoint, I respectfully disagree that direct mailers are somehow inferior in their data utilization. Show me a TransPromo client who is currently utilizing not only modeling techniques, but then further refining those prospective “buyers” into Deciles 1 – 10? Show me a TransPromo client who is effectively employing Lifetime Value scores for direct mailing and lead generation cross-selling? Show me a TransPromo client truly utilizing household-level data to understand both the attitudinal and the behavioral characteristics of the prospect, then – and then only – crafting the message to that household?

The key to success, from my perspective, is building relationships with partners who have the hands-on experience in developing, implementing, and then measuring every step of the way. “  Mark Weishaar, Direct Marketing Practice Leader at IBM/Ricoh InfoPrint Solutions

 “The key is for those companies who take on the data to have the skill set to manage the data, keep care of the data, and help the clients do more with the data. We find much too often companies who take this role on do not have the required skill set, and while a DM shop may have great skill in doing more with the data, they may lack the skill to take care of the data.

A Transactional Shop and a DM Shop have very different cultures, and having experienced working in both cultures, and attempting to integrate the two, they are both very interesting. It may seem simple enough, but they are typically at opposite ends of the spectrum.

I do see DM shops working on building up to being able to handle Transaction type of work, but it is not just about having nice fancy full color devices, it is about being able to manage the process, and the data.  

And we see Transaction shops working on adding DM capability to help fill in the valleys in production, but they to need to change how they manage the process of bringing work in house.

The change in business culture for DM to start work with TP type applications, even the standard transaction type applications will be too much for some, and it is the same on the other side of the fence, the change in business culture on the transaction side to work with DM type of applications, the cultures are very different, those that can make the transition can be successful, but it is not a simple transition for high percentage of the market.” Kevin Smith, Principal and Founder at Courier10

 “TP can grow as a way to communicate with and market to *existing* customers, but it doesn’t work at all for customer acquisition. That requires other mechanisms, including (really good) DM.

This is why a company that can do both, either internally or with a partner will be in a better position moving forward. Service providers especially must stop thinking of themselves one-dimensionally–that they are a DM shop or a transactional printer. Or even as a TP printer. Yet I see bureaus do this all the time. Success will come to those that can do more for their customers. The ones that don’t are gonna’ go away. “ Noel Ward, Managing Director, Brimstone Hill Associates

I’ll look forward to hearing what The Digital Nirvana community thinks of this topic!